"The lassie is after having the hair of her crotch shaved off. Is that the way they do in your city, now?"
"Some Italians do it," said Zopyros. "It's an Etruscan custom. Some of the rich young Tarentines do it, too—you know, those beautiful youths who spend their days striking statuesque poses in the gymnasium. But not us working folk; before I'd let anybody near my family jewels with a razor—"
"We have the hairs pulled out in Neapolis," said Ingomedon.
"Ouch!" said Segovax. "The things folks will do to be in style—"
"Zeus, Apollon, and Demeter!" cried Ingomedon. "Look at that!" The Neapolitan burst into a loud guffaw, in which the entire company joined until the town hall shook with a thunder of mirth.
For the dancing girl, with a final flip, turned a somersault and came clown on the lap of the Roman knight, with her arm around his neck and her face buried in his beard. Expressions of stark horror, dismay, and rage chased each other over the Roman's stern visage. For an instant it looked as if he would rise and stalk out. But, with the naked girl clinging to him like a limpet, this would have involved a scuffle, even more unseemly and undignified than his present position. Seeing that all the rest thought it a good joke, the Roman tried to smile but managed only a ghastly grimace.
The girl leaped down from her perch and made her bows to thunderous applause. When she had snatched up her shift and run out, Gellius Mutilus, the president, rose and said:
"To finish the evening, we shall auction off that little spinning top, for the night, to the highest bidder. Her kindly owner asks me to tell you two things: First, he promises that she may keep half the money the auction brings, for her very own self; and second, she need not take any man who displeases her. What am I bid, gentlemen? Do you care to open the bidding, good Cornelius Arvina?"
"I do not!" snapped the Roman, adjusting his toga.
Pointing, Ingomedon said to Zopyros: "There's your Wolf of the North."
"You mean Rome?"
The Neapolitan wagged his head affirmatively.
"I can't believe that!" exclaimed Zopyros. "Rome is a small, distant, backward, unimportant state, without sea power. How could Rome ever threaten Taras? Other peoples are far more menacing— the Lucanians, the Etruscans, or the Celts. Why, your fair Neapolis might be a greater threat than little old Rome!"
Ingomedon said: "I have been to Rome, man, and know whereof I speak. The Romans are a conservative people—exceedingly dull, in fact. They wouldn't even laugh at a comedy of Aristophanes. With them, custom is king. But they have discipline. We don't."
"Do you mean 'we Neapolitans' or 'we Hellenes'?"
"I know the Neapolitans best, naturally; but the remark applies to others as well. The Spartans have discipline, but cursed few other Hellenes. I have no discipline whatever. Hellas is full of pillow knights—lions in the bedroom, rabbits on the battlefield."
"They tell me the Spartans have been corrupted by success since they overcame the Athenians."
"That may be, but the Romans have a more complex organization than the Spartans ever thought of. Moreover, when the Romans conquer a neighboring people, they admit them—after a waiting period—to full citizenship. Thus their power grows."
"Hellenic cities are much more exclusive," said Zopyros. "Our local gods are jealous gods, who hate having strangers attend their rites."
"Exactly. So, when a Hellenic city gains an empire, as the Athenians did, it looks upon the other peoples of the empire as subjects to be exploited. Naturally, the subjects hate their masters and seize the first opportunity to break away. I don't know by what trick of theology the Romans get around the obstacle of common worship; but they do." The Neapolitan yawned. "By the Dog of Egypt, here I am, trying to play the oracle when I can't even foresee my own affairs a day in advance! The bidding for the girl has already risen beyond the reach of my purse, so I'm going. But remember what I have told you. If you live long enough, you'll see what Rome can do."
A stout, bald landowner won the dancing girl. As the party broke up, Zopyros marked the lean, intense-looking Phoenician sea captain and pushed his way towards him through the crush.
As the sun rose the next morning, Zopyros called at the inn where Korinna occupied one of the two private rooms.
"It's all arranged," he told her. "We sail this morning on the Muttumalein, of Captain Ethbaal."
"Another Phoenician!"
"I can't help that. He's the only one besides Strabon who is leaving within a ten-day. Let's gather our gear and be off!"
Two – VELIA
The strong north wind of the previous day had fled away, but a brisk breeze lingered. The Muttumalein lay in the shelter of a small stone jetty, which curved from Cumae's harborless beach out into the turquoise Tyrrhenian Sea. A precarious plank extended from the sand of the jetty to the high gunwale of the ship. She was a tubby, flush-decked craft with a black hull, about sixty feet long by twenty feet wide. She had a single mast with a yellow square sail and, near the stern, a cabin not much bigger than a doghouse. Oars were piled at the base of the mast; a pair of boarding ladders, one long and one short, were stowed at the stern.
Workmen, shouting in Oscan, were passing casks of wine and olive oil, bolts of linen, and bags of salt down into the hold. Eight swarthy Punic sailors, stripped to loincloths, hauled on ropes and stowed ship's gear. The passengers waited on the jetty for the loading to be completed.
Captain Ethbaal stood on his deck where the plank reached the gunwale, scratching marks on a waxed wooden tablet as each item was brought aboard. Instead of the embroidered robe he had worn to the Sibyl's cave the previous day, he was now clad in ordinary Phoenician seaman's garb: a short-sleeved shirt and a pleated kilt, over I hem a short cape against the morning chill, and a round cap on his head. About his neck still hung the necklace of little glass and copper images of the Pataecian gods. He was a man of average height, slightly stooped, and lean to gauntness, with a nose like a vulture's beak.
Two local merchants stood, also marking tablets, on the deck near Ethbaal. Now and again the loading was held up while Ethbaal and one or the other of the merchants engaged in a last-minute haggle.
The captain's mate, a commonplace-looking little man, stood at the batch, directing the stowage of cargo into the hold. When the last bag of salt had been stowed, Ethbaal beckoned Korinna's attendants, Sophron the bodyguard and the one remaining slave. (The other slave had run away.) At the signal, these two picked up the ends of the poles that formed the litter for the shrouded body of Nestor, carried the body aboard, and lowered it gingerly into the hold.
Now Ethbaal turned to the other passengers on the jetty. "Come aboard!" he called in heavily accented Greek. "But do not enter the cabin!"
They filed up the plank: a middle-aged couple with a twelve-year-old boy; an old Etruscan with a shaven upper lip, who wore a wide-brimmed hat and walked with a crutch; a younger man who was his servant; Segovax the Celt; a traveling singer with his lyre in a linen case; and finally Korinna of Messana. The Muttumalein had no amenities for the passengers, who crowded up forward to be out of the sailors' way. They camped on the bare boards along the bulwarks, making themselves as comfortable as they could with their cloaks and bedding rolls.
Zopyros bid farewell to the Archon and to his friend Archytas, while the two slaves who belonged to the city of Taras, and who had been sent along to serve the three pilgrims, held the mules near the base of the jetty. Zopyros said to Archytas: